Okay, now it is time for Kelticwizard to straighten everybody out here.
The Phalen Lake Elementary School is located in a district which is largely Asian-principally Hmong.
Here is the ethnic breakdown of the school:
............................................................................................
Ethnicity ..........................This School ..................State Average
Asian/Pacific Islander.............. 44%................................. 5%
White, not Hispanic................. 21%.................................. 80%
Black, not Hispanic................. 20%....................................8%
Hispanic................................ 14%................................... 5%
American Indian.....................<1%................................... 2%
From the following
website, we get the 2003 article which clears this whole mess up.
Quote:Phalen Lake Elementary School, St. Paul, Minnesota
The Phalen Lake Elementary School in St. Paul, Minnesota will begin integrating the Hmong Language and culture into its curriculum in April. The move is designed to respond to educational concerns of the district's growing Hmong population and retain students who might otherwise enroll in a nearby charter school with a Hmong-centered program.
One out of three children in the St. Paul public schools is Asian, many of them Hmong. As the Hmong population has grown in size and influence, more Hmong parents have called for opportunities for their children to retain their language, culture and customs. Some of these parents, disenchanted with public school offerings, have enrolled their children in the nearby Hope Academy Charter School, a Hmong-centered program.
At Phalen Lake, 45 percent of the students are Asian. A survey of all Phalen Lake parents found that 85 percent support the new language and culture curriculum.
Plans call for Phalen Lake's 640 students to study either Hmong or Spanish language and culture for 50 minutes of regular class time two days a week. Vocabulary and concepts that students are learning in their other classes will be reinforced and taught in their language classes. The program is being phased in starting this spring, and eventually all students will be able to take the curriculum. [From-Star Tribune] (Jan. 4)
The Hope Academy Charter School is likely the other academy the article speaks of. It almost certainly is either just across the street or right down the block from the Phalen Lake Elementary School, and before this year, the buses picked up the students from both academies.
The Hmong academy is clearly meant only for kids who are totally Hmong, who are probably just arrived a couple of years ago and whose parents don't speak English or have much to do with any non-Hmong person. Phalen Lake Elementary School also has Hmong kids, but these are likely the kids who know English and whose parents have been here awhile and begun to integrate themselves into the mainstream American culture. The school administration just gives the kids some classes in the Hmong culture so their Hmong parents can feel the kids are learning the things that hey learned back in the old country.
This year, they apparently changed bus schedules and the kids from the Hmong academy have their bus, picked up at one place, and the kids from the Phalen Lake Elementary School-including the Hmong kids who went to Phalen Lake Elementary School-now had their own bus, which picks them up from a different place.
All of which is just ducky, except that the school district never notified Rachel Armstrong that her kids would now be picked up by a different bus from the kids going to the Hmong academy.
She and her kids were probably waiting, as they always had, at the same bus stop she always did, and there were no doubt Hmong kids and their parents there as well, as there always had been. When the bus driver stopped to pick up the Hmong kids, to take them to the Hmong academy, Rachel Armstrong was no doubt told by the bus driver that she could no longer pick up the kids. Possibly, the kids were now supposed to go to a different bus stop, and it was probably too late to to there and catch the bus.
At any rate, the bus driver agreed to take her kids this time, but told her that she no longer could. Hopefully the bus driver told her to get in touch with the school administration to get the thing straightened out. We don't know how amicable this conversation between the bus driver and Ms Armstrong was.
Rachel Armstrong's kids were not kicked off the bus for speaking English. They were simply scheduled for a different bus, but the school administration never got word to her. The Hmong kids going to the Hmong academy no doubt were learning English at that school, and no doubt spoke some English words on that bus and the bus driver didn't kick them off.
Thsi incident is NOT a case of kids being kicked off a bus for speaking English!!
